It's also important and interesting to note that synthetic folic acid that is added to foods to increase their folate content and also to multivitamins or supplements is much better absorbed by the body than forms of naturally occuring folate. It's one of the few vitamins whose synthetic form is more absorbable than the naturally occuring form. PS I have a degree in human nutrition from the University of Florida, I promise I'm not making this up!

Reading through the comments, I noticed several mentioned that seaweed extract should not be added to ice cream to make it more creamy. Those extracts are not necessarily added to make ice cream more creamy, but to keep ice crystal size small as the ice cream sits in you self-defrosting freezer. Don't get me wrong-I do like Bryers-but ice cream without those extracts get icy very quickly in the freezer. So unless you plan on eating all the ice cream in a short amount of time, don't be afraid of buying ice cream with a bit of seaweed in it. Cream doesn't give the creamy texture, the small ice crystals do.

I've been into reading food labels for a while now, but got stymied when we moved to Australia from the US. Down here they are required to use codes from a lookup table rather than actual ingredients, so it might look something like this: (exerpt from my bread)

This is ridiculous because you actually have no idea what is in your food anymore. The list is made available on a governmental website, but really who is going to carry around a list of 1500 items when they do their shopping? It seems like a total food industry scam to me.
Anyway, maybe you should file this under 'misplaced rant'.
-Stephane

I noticed the iron entry says that there are no side effects for iron as a food additive and then looks like it has an asterisk, but I can't find a footnote for it on the page. I thought you might add in the table that overdosing on iron supplements is a major cause of fatal poisoning in children. It's such a harmless seeming thing that it's good to be aware of this.

I notice that your list does not have alumimum phosphate or any alumimum additives (i.e baking powder component). Does alumimum in the diet contribute or cause Alzheimer's ? I dont know, although I do know that there it concerns me that it might, and after seeing several family members go through Alzheimer's it bothers me that it is in a number of foods still.

For example almost all of those frozen pizzas and some frozen foods have it.
sometimes tortillas do and many pre-mixed baking mixes still have it.

I rarely ever use baking powder, but aluminum is still used in some, although not as much as it used to be. Right now I have an aluminum and phosphate free backing powder with only calcum carbonate and citric acid, not that phosphates are really that bad, I think they are hard on the kidneys maybe?

my favorite thing was to make pancakes with baking soda and sour/butter milk (mild with a table spoon of vingar) it works great and I thought they tasted great without the aftertaste of baking powder, maybe it didnt make a diference i dunno.

Thanks Michael,
For opening up this topic.
As someone who finds cooking relaxing, I generally don't eat pre-prepared foods (except, of course Cheetos for breakfast), both because of a suspicion of additives, but also because of an objection to the "sameness" of mass produced foodstuffs. I can make a pound of beans in a pressure cooker for about .89 cents or I can buy a can of beans for about the same price.
I rarely buy the can because I like the variability of my own cooking. And I know what has gone in to it.
(Except that the pressure cooker is aluminum, and who knows what the dried beans have been treated with to prevent pests and mold, oh well...)
I know a lot of people who distain cooking because they consider it a distraction, or they just don't have the time.
I treasure distraction...Sometimes just standing in the kitchen on a sunny afternoon chopping veggies feels good. I always find that ordinary tasks open up the mind, my best solutions usually come when I am doing dishes, riding on the bus, anything except staring at a piece of paper (or computer screen)

A note about artificial low carb sugar /sweetener. This came up as a tangent in my conservation biology class a while ago. The low carb sweeteners are a modified form of sugar. As it is almost sugar, it retains the sweet taste. However, the body recognizes it as a toxin so it does not metabolize it. Most of it passes through your system, but a small amount (something like 5-15%, I cant remember exactly) accumulates in your body. I don't know of evidence saying this is harmful, but your body thinks it is toxic.... Not to mention the completely unknown environmental consequences of this now common ingredient.

I saw artifical colors listed on the side of carton of my Fat Free Half n' Half. I wrote them to find out what these colors where...and they said it was proprietory, and that they did not have to tell me. I have heard some horror stories about users of non-dairly creamers having long strands of ropey gunk scraped out of their arteries...

The list of additives does not load on my computer (using firefox, tried IE as well). Help?

It's not working right now. Apparently, it was one of the pages that died when I moved servers and changed out most of my code. I discovered this last week, so it's on my list of things to fix. Sorry for the inconvenience.

I recently read an artical about Carbon Monoxide gas used in meat packaging to make older meat look bright red longer. (One of the Wal___'s, I can't remember whether Walmart or Walgreens had agreed to stop doing it. The article was in Treehugger)
That's the kind of thing that really alarms me, because stuff like that isn't listed as an "ingredient".